


Memento

by thankyouandyou



Category: Spartacus: Vengeance, Spartacus: War of the Damned
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 20:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouandyou/pseuds/thankyouandyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remind me, he says, of our days together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento

Remind me, he says, of our days together.

His ankles touch Agron’s under the sheets. The night is warm, their bodies apart, except for that small point of pressure.

There were nights, Agron hums into the dark, when I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t feel your weight on me. Now I can fall asleep not touching you.

Isn’t this a sign of a heart grown colder? Nasir asks. Agron wonders if that is genuine worry in his voice or if he’s teasing him. In the dark, Nasir can lie so easily, but they have stumbled upon impossible notions in that head of his, they’ve dug up the most irrational of beliefs and found them deeply rooted.

(There was an autumn afternoon when he stood with his hands linked behind his back, staring at the moving sea, asking won’t you wed, all the women in the village would die to have you.)

It is a sign, Agron replies, of no longer living in fear. I don’t wake up each morning fearing to find you torn from me.

Nasir nods. His hand finds Agron’s wrist and a warm mouth is pressed onto the lines of his palm, claiming the sum of his entire life, his skin, his bones, his past and his future.

(Won’t you wed, he’d asked, as if he couldn’t see the beating heart in his hands, and his eyes were dark and full of thunder.)

*

Remind me, Nasir whispers. More.

One night, Agron says, you walked towards me holding your bleeding chest and asking for a sword.

Nasir rolls over, facing him. The shadows play on his face, the candlelight burns in his eyes like a challenge.

What happened that night.

I walked towards you and claimed your mouth and said you were to stay, and I to go.

Nasir twists, slides, bites into a collarbone and speaks against the skin there in a hurry, like the words will burn his tongue if held too long. I prayed to the gods for the first time in years. I prayed for days.

Agron fists a hand in his long hair, winds his fingers into it, lost forever. I knew then the gods favored me.

When you came back without so much as a scratch on you, Nasir grins, climbing on top of him. I remember.

No.

When I turned around and found you standing there, asking to join us.

Nasir’s back curves, his hands press both of Agron’s against the mattress. He finds his mouth, finds it again, and again, breaks away to breathe, to whisper-

and you said-

I said-

-this time you stay

-and I go.

Agron surges up and bites at Nasir’s mouth, fights to free his hands and use them to bring them close, closer,  _closer._ There is a drop of panicked longing stored inside them still, it will never die out, the knowledge of what they’ve lived through, the certainty of what they’d do for each other, there are nights like this when every kiss and every drag of flesh scream _I’d die for you,_ and every bruise screams back  _as if I’d let you._

And Agron could get lost to this, right now, lose his mind to that savage rhythm that is what they are, always terrified and hungered for each other, always disbelieving, half-mad, ready to draw blood. He draws blood, his teethmarks red on Nasir’s shoulder- but Nasir slows them down, soothes their frenzy, presses his warm hands on Agron’s face, his lips to Agron’s eyes and speaks in tongues, strange hissing syllables like calming a horse, like whispering to the wind.

*

Remind me.

Today Nasir’s eyes are black with sorrow, his lips bloody, and Agron’s heart is poisoned too. They mourn a friend.

All lives end, Nasir hisses viciously, just to hear himself say it. His body shakes. Remind me! he growls, and Agron does.

Agron tells him to hush, pins him down on the bed and speaks in names.

He writes  _Crixus_ on the flush of Nasir’s bottom lip.  _Naevia_ on the curve of his upper lip, for he would never dare separate the two.  _Mira_  is scribbled across his Adam’s apple,  _Rhascos_ on the slope of his neck. _Oenomaus_ takes up his entire forearm,  _Chadara_  three out of the five fingers of his left hand.  _Gannicus_ spreads over his shoulder blades. _Spartacus_ takes up the space between his heart, and the long scar that brought him into the brotherhood.

The moon rises and Agron covers him in names, letter by letter, names half-forgotten, names best forgotten, names soiled and names missed. He writes his brother’s name on Nasir’s thumb, the names of all the men that fell next to him in the arena.

He buries his own name in the nape of Nasir’s neck.

He works all night, until he’s run out of names and memories, until Nasir’s eyes have dried and his brown skin is wrapped in an imaginary spiderweb, the names of everyone they’ve ever met, intertwined, woven into a shroud.

Agron covers Nasir’s body with his own. Nasir wraps around him, fights to get inside his ribcage, under his bones. They mourn, together.

Remember? Agron asks with the first rays of sunshine.

Nasir traces letters onto Agron’s skin.

*

Remind me.

What are we.

What are they.

Agron is red-hot steel. Agron is gleaming teeth and the taste of bile in the mouth, he is a gladiator. He is the cheers of the crowd in the arena, he is the screams and the smell burning wood. He is the gods’ favorite mutt, he is a phoenix, rising again bloody from his ashes.

Nasir is clay, earth stirred with blood, baked, burnt, burning, alive by mistake, by design, who knows, breath pushed into him through the Eastern winds that smell of cinnamon. He is a walking bit of Syria, forget names and collars. He is what made him. He is as bright as the sun.

Agron swallows down the poetry, whatever secret wound it came from. He can’t see Nasir in the dark but he no longer needs to. The night is warm and they don’t need to touch, but they are touching, everywhere. Nasir’s weight is on him and Agron can sleep.

Nasir’s heart is beating against his chest, Agron’s answering in kind.

What are we?

We are still here.


End file.
